Ms. Nana Oye Edmund, Inpatient Pharmacy Supervisor at the International Maritime Hospital (IMaH) in Tema, has encouraged patients to complete drugs prescribed by their doctors to ensure optimal health.
She explained that completing the full course of medicines ensures the eradication of infections and helps treat various conditions completely.
Ms. Edmund gave the caution during the weekly “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility! A Tema GNA Office initiative aimed at promoting health-related communication and providing a platform for health information dissemination to influence personal health choices through improved health literacy.
Speaking on the subject “Poly Pharmacy and Safe Use of Medicine in Society,” Ms. Edmund said stopping medication prematurely may allow the illness to return stronger, and illness-causing bacteria may multiply even if symptoms go away.
“So an example is when a patient is prescribed some antibiotics. If you stop the treatment before the antibiotic cycle is over, the remaining bacteria become resistant to the antibiotics; they can potentially do even more harm, and your physician may have to prescribe more medication,” she said.
Dr. Marc Kwame Dzradosi, the Head of Pharmaceutical Services at IMaH, also noted that it was important to finish prescribed courses of drug syrups like blood tonics when dealing with anaemia treatment, which typically required consistent adherence to medication.
He said it was crucial to follow up with healthcare providers to monitor progress and ensure treatment was working effectively and conditions are returning to normal.
He explained that it was important to beware of mixing drugs as there could be a drug interaction, and therefore it was important to tell health providers about all medications that were currently being taken to prevent duplicates.
He encouraged all to follow doctors’ orders and boldly ask pharmacists for clarification when prescribed a drug, while preventing the act of sharing old or unused medicines with others.
Speaking on Poly Pharmacy, Ms. Sandra Araba Mensah, IMaH Deputy Head of Pharmacy, emphasised that using a single drug carries dangers, including the possibility of an adverse reaction to food or drink, an allergic reaction, unfavourable side effects, or a medication that did work as intended.
She said the advantages included pain relief, infection treatment, and condition management.
The Deputy Head of Pharmacy at IMaH stated that it was important to exercise caution when taking either a single medication or a few of them, particularly when the number rises, as in the case of polypharmacy.
She stated that the likelihood of adverse medication increasing was polypharmacy’s biggest risk.
According to Ms. Mensah, polypharmacy was also linked to more difficult drug adherence issues.
“This is not all that surprising considering that increasing the number of medications naturally creates more management challenges for patients, thus increasing the likelihood of medication nonadherence,” she said.